Ten Sides of Tony
by LazyEnigma
Summary: A series of disconnected oneshots in which Tony discovers the sides to himself that he didn't know he had - with the help of a certain Miss Potts, of course.
1. Lonely Tony

**Hey there!**

**This is my first Iron Man fic, and naturally it's Pepperony. Who else **_**would **_**it be?**

**I plan on this being ten chapters long, and for each chapter to be a oneshot disconnected from the last, all depicting a different sides to Tony and, also, Tony and Pepper's relationship. As it's my first Pepperony fic, I'm still a bit rocky when it comes to writing with their characters, but hopefully I'll get used to it as I go along.**

**It is gonna get major fluffy up in this joint, just a warning!**

**DISCLAIMER: Are you really gonna make me say it? I don't own Iron Man, nor RDJ. **_Sigh_

**Lonely Tony**

For Pepper Potts, some days were more physically taxing than others. Some put a lot of stress on her shoulders and gave her mental state of mind a nasty lurch, and some days did both. Today was definitely one of those days that did both. Physical and mental. Punch, kick.

The PA was exhausted down to her bones and, when the clock on the wall signalled it was nearing midnight, she wanted nothing more than to be at home in her bed. However, being a personal assistant to one of the richest men on the continent did not give her such leeway and she was forced to ignore the incessant ache of tiredness at the back of her skull and get back to work. Work, of course, being giving Tony company as he played Call of Duty. And kicking his butt at it, although that wasn't on the job description.

"Tell me, _boss_," Pepper said, putting heavy emphasis on the word 'boss' and rolling her eyes, "why I'm sat here playing video games when I should be completing my paperwork. Rather, the paperwork that _you _should have done yourself, which you so kindly gave to me. Remember that paperwork? I do."

Tony stretched, yawning widely and looking strikingly like a lion with his mussed up hair, and glanced at Pepper under his lashes, hitting her with a smoulder that usually swept girls off their feet. A smirk toyed with the corner of his lips and, when she didn't respond at all, he gave up with a chuckle.

"How come that never works on you? Where did this immunity to my overall attractiveness come from, huh?" He grinned and tossed the controller to the side, obviously bored after so many hours of playing.

"It's not an immunity, Mr Stark, it's this little thing called _willpower_."

Tony laughed at that, rising as Pepper did and following her into the kitchen. His fingers drummed restlessly on the counter as she bustled about making him a hot chocolate – Tony didn't even wonder how she knew that he was thirsty, or that he really liked to have hot chocolate when it was late, or that he loved to have extra milk. Raising his eyebrows, the man realised that she was only preparing one mug. Something shifted in his chest and made it marginally harder to breathe.

"Only one mug? Come on, I'm paying you a lot, the least you can do is make me one while you're at it." The joking tone and the sarcasm helped a lot at moments like these – moments when Tony felt consumed by loneliness, utterly swallowed by the need to have somebody close to him. Somebody that wasn't a cheap bottle-blonde he had picked up at the club.

Pepper tutted fondly as she sprinkled a couple of chocolate flakes on top, enough to satisfy her boss's sweet-tooth, but few enough to ensure he wasn't up all night. Hyperactive Tony was just impossible, as she had learned from past experiences that involved her actually having to turn off her phone. "It's late, Tony," she said with a sad smile, placing the mug down on the counter in front of him and turning to wipe the surface. "You know I need to get back, we have a meeting to attend tomorrow."

Drinking deeply, Tony emerged with a remarkable moustache of whipped cream and he gave her such a charmingly dazzling grin that she couldn't help but laugh. With the same cloth that was in her hand she dabbed at the corners of his mouth, standing on her tiptoes with her tongue between her teeth. Tony surveyed her as he drank more, choosing to ignore the scalding heat of the drink so as to admire his personal assistant better. Losing control of what he did and didn't say came from nowhere and took him off guard.

"Please, stay."

Pepper was shocked. Startled. Confused. More than a little bit tempted. Sighing, she said, "You know I can't do that. You know I _won't _do that. I've told you this before, Anthony."

The genius noted the choice of name Pepper had used and threw it back at her, turning the rather serious conversation into their regular banter; banter was easy, banter _worked_. "I don't mean it in that sense, _Virginia_. Are you forgetting the guest suite I had designed especially for you? Please, Pep, please just stay."

The question was inevitable: "Why?"

Tony swallowed, licked his lips fleetingly and swallowed again. The truth was, he didn't know why. The mere action of considering 'why' made him uncomfortable. He didn't _want _to know why. Shaking his head, he took a last gulp of hot chocolate and passed the empty mug into Pepper's hands. She frowned as she studied his face, unsatisfied when she discovered only sincerity. Who was this man and what had he done with her boss?

Feeling rather conflicted, she weighed out the situation. Should she stay, give in to the fuzzy desire that resided somewhere behind her ribcage, stay with Tony and throw away any ounce of dignity she had left? On the other hand, there was the scandal that it would cause. People in the media didn't tend to listen to explanations, and a voice at the back of Pepper's mind told her that 'we slept in different rooms' probably wouldn't sell it for them. There was also the fact that Tony would take this as a victory on his part: he'd start to expect it, and the last thing Pepper wanted was to be cornered into sleeping in her boss's mansion every night.

Steeling herself, Pepper opened her mouth to say, "No, Tony, I can't", but one look in those puppy dog eyes shattered her resolve. Her mouth closed, opened and then closed again, but nothing came out. He managed a smile, commenting something silly about how much she looked like a fish out of water, and the PA realised that it was hopeless. There was no way she could resist such a genuine, pure smile. Such a genuine, pure Tony.

"I'll stay."

A grin spread like butter across the billionaire's face- a face which seemed to be holding too many emotions to keep track of. Sheer joy, a mellow happiness that resided in the crinkles around his eyes and something even gentler than the two, something soft around the edges that made his face seem ten years younger. His eyes swam with emotion.

Gasping, Pepper felt all of the breath being squeezed from her lungs as Tony closed the distance between the two of them and pulled her into a rib-cracking hug. He swirled her around, laughing loudly when she squealed, and then set her back down on her feet, taking a step back to examine her face rather sternly.

"Are you sure?"

Pepper rolled her eyes, saying, "Don't make me change my mind, boss."

"Great! I'll go and sort out your room, gotta make sure you're comfortable so that I don't have to convince you next time."

With a wink he disappeared off up the hall, whistling a tune that sounded suspiciously like _It's a Small World After All _through his teeth. Pepper stared after him, half exasperated and half smitten. Trying not to notice the way the corners of her mouth curved upwards, she followed him.

A violent storm swept Malibu that night, rain hammering on the roof so loudly that it sounded like a giant was using the Stark mansion as a drum set. Pepper, having settled in quite nicely in the guest suite, slept soundly through it all, stirring only when a rather strange dream involving her getting her hand caught between two stacks of paperwork caused her to wake.

There was no dramatic sitting-bolt-upright, or a fairy tale eyes-fluttering-open, but rather one moment she was asleep and the next awake. As her eyes accustomed to the alien scene that was the guest suite bedroom she frowned, struggling to remember anything through the foggy veil of sleepiness that fluttered in her subconscious. Giving her head a shake and fighting back the urge to roll her eyes at her boss' persuasive antics, she decided upon getting a glass of water before going back to sleep. It was still dark outside, and she didn't need to be up for a couple more hours.

However, when she sat up, she became aware of the fact that one of her hands _was _trapped in something after all – not stacks of paperwork but, to Pepper's extreme surprise, the very man that she had just been thinking about.

Tony Stark lay asleep across the mattress, his head resting on his arm and his body slumping in an uncomfortable-looking kneeling position. He held Pepper's hand held tightly in both of his own and the moonlight was glistening off of something sliding down his cheek.

"Jarvis," she whispered, panic pulling at her heart strings, "turn the lights up to ten per cent."

The AI obeyed silently and a small fraction of warm light merged with the moon, illuminating the spacious bedroom and, more importantly, the tell-tale tear tracks etched into Tony's face.

Pepper reeled in shock, hardly noticing that her hand was still clasped in his. Never in all of her years of working for Tony had she seen him cry; never had she seen him come even _remotely _close to crying. For him to be here, in her guest suite, in the middle of the night, holding her hand and crying as he slept sent her mind into overload and she did the only thing she could think to do – rouse him.

A whimper fell out of his lips, helpless and vulnerable and scared, and for the first time Pepper saw the boy in him, the little orphan child who had hardly a soul in the world to call his friend. Under all the layers of cheekiness and sarcasm he was raw.

"Tony. Tony, wake up."

Virginia Pepper Potts choked on a sob and watched as another tear rolled down his cheek, fluid as the rain outside that cascaded down the window panes. She shook him weakly, whispered his name, wiped the tears from his face, but he only woke when she untangled her hand from his.

Chocolate eyes, red-rimmed and painted silver by the moon, flew open and blinked several times. Pepper felt her heart stop. He seemed unable to talk, but his eyes said everything. She saw the fear in them, something swimming in the glassy surface that was very childlike. Trust. Embarrassment.

Shame.

Before he said something he shouldn't, Tony rose, his muscles screaming in pain from the awkward position he had been sleeping in, and turned to leave. Pepper's heart took over and her hand grabbed his, pulling him back. He allowed her to. He gave in.

Pepper tugged him onto the mattress so that he sat beside her, but he wouldn't meet her gaze – she understood, but it didn't make it hurt any less. Her hands held his jaw and she turned his face so that he was forced to look at her, and she was forced to look at the shame burning in his brown eyes.

"I don't know what that was." His voice was husky and his throat sounded dry.

Shaking her head, the PA shushed him, pulling the man against her chest like she would with a child and rocking him. Gently so as not to disturb him, she fell back against the pillows and Jarvis turned off the lights again. The room faded to black and Tony got some of his dignity back. The billionaire unwrapped her arms from around his torso and instead wrapped _his _arms around _her_, feeling that this made him a bit more dominant and in control of the situation.

"I get lonely, Pepper. I get lonely all the time."

The PA threw all of her morals and ethics out of the window and pulled herself closer to her boss – no, not her boss, right now he was just Tony – so as to listen to the near-silent whirr of the arc reactor. It was strangely relaxing to her.

"I feel like my pride is holding me back, and that if anybody throws help my way it's because they think I'm vulnerable. I _am _vulnerable, and I'm only just realising that now."

Considering her next words, Pepper stroked rhythmic circles into Tony's back with her fingertip, a technique that, once again, she often used with children – particularly her niece, in the days when she had time enough to spare that she would babysit. "Do you want to know a secret?"

He raised his eyebrows, pulling his head back an inch or two to see her face as she looked up at him. She smiled, lulled by the warmth of the room and the general closeness of the man, and said, "I get lonely too."

His breath fanned across her face and she closed her eyes, smelling hot chocolate and peppermint and _Tony_. Pulling her closer, he snuggled his face into her neck and said, almost inaudibly, "Thank you for keeping hold of me. Most would have let me go by now. I don't know what I would do without you here."

She couldn't find a single word in the whole English language to respond to that, but it didn't matter because Tony beat her to it, anyway.

"I love you, Ms Potts."

Holding back the rush of exhilaration that swirled in her abdomen, Pepper whispered, just loud enough to be heard, "I love you too, Mr Stark."

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and felt the twisting in his chest settle, as if all of the shrapnel that orbited his heart was gone.

Loneliness left with it.


	2. Sleepy Tony

**Hey! The response I got to the first chapter was amazing, thank you for your lovely reviews! I felt more encouraged to write, but as I have two exams tomorrow I was still pretty limited with my time. I'm not entirely sure when the next chapter will be out; as my penname says, I'm incredibly lazy, haha.**

**DISCLAIMER: Tony Stark, as sad as it is, does not belong to me. Not do any of his friends. :c**

**Sleepy Tony**

It was Monday morning, it was rush hour, and Pepper Potts had overslept. By two hours, sixteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds, to be precise. She stood shivering on the pavement, clinging to her coffee cup like it was a life buoy and growing more irritated as the seconds ticked by. Tony wasn't picking up his phone, Happy was late, and it was colder than Jack Frost's balls outside.

Checking her watch, Pepper allowed a rare scowl to find its way onto her face; she was not amused in the slightest, and it was _not _an ideal start to the morning. When one of the nine Stark limousines finally came rolling round the corner she had to make an effort to get her feet to work again, and ended up waddling over to the car like a constipated penguin.

"Good morning," Happy said, managing to hide his smirk as the PA set her BlackBerry down rather aggressively on the seat next to her.

"Hardly," she sighed, rubbing sleep from her eyes and trying valiantly to readjust her ponytail. "Could you take me to the office please, Mr Hogan?"

"Sure I can. You just work on getting some caffeine into your system; you look like something out of The Walking Dead at the moment."

Pepper laughed humourlessly, popping a mint into her mouth and taking a swig of coffee as she turned her attention back to her phone. She was over an hour later to work, but it didn't really bother her as Tony was probably still asleep anyway, more than likely hung-over – the PA gave herself strict mental orders to calm down, stop fretting, chill her beans.

"Hey, Happy, have you heard from Mr Stark this morning?"

The driver twisted round and shook his head, frowning slightly. "Nah, Jarvis sent my phone a message though, apparently he was up all night."

The woman sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her finger and thumb; Tony only ever pulled all-nighters when he was on the brink of a new creation or discovery, which meant that he was currently in inventor mode. Pepper had discovered long ago that _nothing _was more challenging than when all Tony wanted to do was work in his mancave – eating, drinking and any and all personal hygiene went out of the window. "Oh, joy."

Happy laughed as he manoeuvred the limo around the angry swarm of yellow cabs with skill that came with being a billionaire's driver, whilst Pepper took to her phone once more, resetting her alarm several times to ensure that she didn't sleep in again tomorrow. When she resurfaced, feeling slightly more reassured, she found herself looking at the familiar building as it slid into view around the corner. Happy pulled up at the entrance and Pepper hopped out in a better mood than when she'd hopped in.

"Thanks, Happy," she said, flashing a smile before shutting the door and making her way into the building.

As she marched towards the elevator, throwing 'hello's and 'good morning's where necessary, Pepper mentally ran through her plan of action – to get more coffee down her throat, to get all of her paperwork done and to reschedule the _damn _meeting with the CEO of Hammer Tech that Tony had somehow managed to worm his way out of for the past three months. He was too persuasive for his own good.

The elevator doors opened with a _ding _and Pepper felt a yawn bubble from her lips. She spent the short ride up to the top of the building sorting out the haystack that was her hair, trying to stop herself from humming along to the elevator music that was probably permanently etched into her subconscious. Twenty seconds later and she was marching over to the oak double doors, tossing her coat on the couch, turning towards the coffee machine and then doing a double take-

"_Tony?_"

Tony Stark sat behind the desk, looking rather dapper in a suit (Pepper was so used to seeing him in sweats and a dirty tank top by now that it came as a surprise) and wearing a pair of the amber aviators that he wouldn't leave the house without. He stared at her, completely still, and she found herself growing uncomfortable that she couldn't make out his eyes behind the sunglasses.

"Did you know that ceiling lights aren't going to blind you? The glasses are, um, unnecessary, and a little bit unnerving."

She tutted when he didn't answer, passing it off as his usual odd, bordering-on-assholish behaviour; instead, she busied herself in making coffee, turning only to ask him if he wanted a cup. He stared straight at her, still as stone, and said absolutely nothing.

"Are you going to answer me at all today? Because I can be really mean; I'll reschedule that meeting so that it falls on your birthday, and you can take my word for-"

He interrupted her with a grunt.

An actual grunt. Pepper stood, startled and more than a little bit confused, and watched as her boss's lip fluttered and, lo and behold, he _snored_. She marched forward and crouched beside his chair, hands reaching up to gently pull off the sunglasses and reveal closed eyes, ringed with exhaustion and lashes that were slightly damp. When the metal frame of the glasses slipped down his nose, his eyes opened.

"Wazzamatta?"

Tony's hands reached out and seized Pepper by the shoulders and, before she could protest, he had her sat on his lap, her back curved into his chest like a jigsaw puzzle piece and his arms linked loosely around her waist. The cold surface of the arc reactor pressed against her skin and she supressed a shiver. He spoke into her neck, his voice thick with sleep, "Why'd you wake me?" His beard grazed the bare skin of her shoulder and she felt his eyes slip shut again as his muscles relaxed.

"You snored at me."

Her indignant tone earned her a laugh, one which caused a chill to rock her spine.

"I'm sorry I snored at you, Miss Potts, I was up all night and so I'm rather tired."

"What on Earth were you doing to be up all night?" Pepper wasn't sure she wanted to know, but she spoke so as to distract herself from acknowledging the colour creeping into her cheeks.

"I was finishing that remarkable stack of paperwork that was accumulating on your desk. It's okay, you don't have to thank me, it's a hero thing."

"And why did you do that?" She was shocked, and she hoped her voice didn't betray her cool demeanour. Guilt crashed into her gut as she remembered the mental accusations she had previously made about her boss and his mysterious nightly-escapade; _'obviously hungover', _she had assumed.

His lips found her ear and his breath tickled as he said, "So that you had no excuse for saying no to going out to dinner with me tonight."

_Change the subject, _Pepper's mind screamed at her, and she hastily stammered, "Is this, ah, not a little inappropriate?" She gestured to the position in which they were sat, more than aware by now that her face was nothing short of beet-red.

"Who's complaining, Miss Potts? I'm certainly not."

"Well, um, I sort of-"

"I'm sorry," he whispered, yawning into her hair and not bothering to wipe the sleepy tears that came with monstrous yawns like his, "am I making you uncomfortable?"

"Not exactly, but your yawns are conta- contagio-" Pepper broke off as a yawn escaped her own lips, and she frowned irritably. "Contagious."

"Mmm."

He stayed quiet for such a long time that Pepper suspected he had fallen back asleep, but she didn't mind. Cupping her hands around his, she exhaled in contentment, shut her eyes and murmured, "You didn't have to do my paperwork, I'd have come regardless."

"Would you now?" he mumbled, barely moving his lips; truth was, he _had _fallen asleep again.

"Mmhm."

Pepper found herself breathing as he did, inhaling as his chest rose and exhaling as it fell. It was very relaxing, and within a few minutes the longing she had earlier nursed for another cup of coffee was gone. She was on the brink of falling into a warm slumber…

"Well, well, what do we have here?" Obadiah leaned against the doorframe, his arms folded and his eyebrows raised in a smug, _gotcha _manner.

Like a flash Pepper was on her feet, but a glance over her shoulder told her that Tony hadn't so much as moved. He opened one bleary eye and shrugged, smirking slightly as he said, "Nothing really, Pepper was just telling me how much she wanted to go to dinner with me tonight."

"I said nothing of the sort."

Stane caught the redhead's eye and grinned, "You'll only inflate his ego, Miss Potts."

"Honestly," Tony said, rising to his feet and stretching, "she was practically begging."

His hand brushed against hers as he strode over to greet Obadiah, and in the brief moment of contact he pressed a small slip of paper into the palm of her hand. The two men left the room to discuss their latest business plan, and Pepper caught Tony wink at her before he put his sunglasses back on.

Trembling a little, she glanced down at the piece of paper and found that she had to sit down before her knees gave way –

_I'll pick you up at seven._

"Pepper," the PA groaned, covering her face with her hands to hide the fact that her cheeks were now as red as her hair, "what have you gotten yourself into?"


	3. Bored Tony

**Hello again! You'll be happy (or sad, but hopefully happy) to know that I'm still alive and updating. It's been quiet for a while and so I apologise, but as I'm off for a couple of weeks I should be able to get chapters up more frequently. Probably. Maybe. Don't hurt me!**

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own the man of metal or his 'out-of-control-gorgeous' personal assistant, yada yada yada.**

**Bored Tony**

Pepper was always hesitant when she had to wake up Tony herself – admittedly not a very common situation, but on the rare occasion (when Tony was near-comatose and could probably have slept through an earthquake and they were running late) it was unavoidable. Today was one of those rare occasions. With a sigh, the PA steeled herself and marched into the bedroom she had tried so hard to avoid.

"Get up."

She threw a signal to Jarvis and every light in the room came on, the impossible darkness that had roamed previously having been chased away. Tony Stark lay, starfishing, in the middle of a bed that could accommodate a football team and still have room for more; thick snores rumbled in his chest and his mouth hung open, making him look rather as if he was trying to swallow Thomas the Tank Engine whole. Pepper stifled a smirk and reminded herself that she was supposed to be angry – instead of curling up next to him like her heart was telling her to, she obeyed her brain and kneeled beside him. A sharp flick to the forehead and he was up in an instant.

"W'tim's'it?"

"It is fifty-four minutes past seven in the morning, Sir," came Jarvis's cool voice.

Pepper added, "In other words, time you got up, mister."

The billionaire scratched lazily through the mane that was his hair, yawning in his personal assistant's face and looking rather bedraggled. His brown eyes were shiny and half-lidded, and Pepper found herself very distracted as she stared into them, unable to resist the urge to count every shade of chocolate, locate every hint of gold and green. A gruff clearing-of-throat broke her reverie and she rose to her feet, straightening her skirt and tightening her ponytail in a professional manner.

Tony threw aside his quilt and clambered out of bed, grumbling as he dragged his feet over to his wardrobe, seemingly unashamed of the little spanners and pliers that adorned his boxer shorts.

"Black or white?" he called over his shoulder, his hands busy sifting through all of his suits. "In fact, there's that one purple suit I haven't worn out yet, it's pretty snazzy-"

"Tony, you're going to a business meeting, not a party."

"Has anybody ever told you that you are incredibly dull?"

"Yes," Pepper said, sitting down on the corner of his bed and turning pointedly away as her boss proceeded to pull off his boxers. "You do. Frequently."

"Hey, at least I have the decency to pay you for it," he countered lightly as he walked past Pepper, completely naked, to reach his underwear drawer.

Feeling the colour creep into her cheeks, the redhead squeezed her eyes shut; _fight the damn temptation, Potts, _she told herself sternly. She found herself questioning, at times like this, where her willpower came from – any average woman would have given in longago, but Pepper was still going strong. A smug grin found its way onto her features and Tony paused in the process of pulling on his socks to raise an eyebrow. Odd woman.

"You can open your eyes now, I promise," the billionaire said, placing one hand on her chin and carefully pulling open an eye with the other. She took in his shirtless (albeit trouser-clad) state and rolled her eyes; Pepper had seen enough of Tony's bare torso in her years of working for him that, had she the skill, she could paint it perfectly. It hardly fased her anymore.

"So you went for white, huh?" she commented, standing to fetch the snow-coloured blazer jacket that went with his suit trousers as he pulled on one of his favourite blue shirts.

"I still feel like purple would've been better."

She shook her head in exasperation, holding up the jacket for Tony to slide his arms into the sleeves. Spinning him around to face her she straightened the collar and fastened both buttons, finding it increasingly harder to ignore the way his lazy eyes followed her every movement, recorded every freckle on her nose.

"How do I look?" he asked her, striking a pose and wiggling his eyebrows.

"Oh, very sexy," she said sarcastically, "though most men shower before important business meetings."

"Shower schmower, that's what cologne is for, see?" Pepper took the liberty to pick out said cologne; he raised both eyebrows this time when she sprayed him with an orange can that he had forgotten had even existed. "Where'd that come from? Why'd you pick it?"

She shrugged nonchalantly, deciding that she would sooner quit than admit that it had been the cologne he had worn the night they danced, and that it was permanently lingering in her subconscious. Instead, she covered with an airy, "The can caught my eye, is all. Ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," the man said with a yawn, already adopting a whiny tone to his voice.

"Good." She smiled, unable to deny how adorable he was when he whined. "Jarvis, shut down everything after us, okay?"

A short drive and an even shorter elevator ride later and the pair were taking their seats at a huge oval table, Pepper throwing apologies for their bad timing at anybody who would listen. Tony assumed the seat at the head of the table, reclining his chair back and tucking his hands snugly behind his head. He didn't even attempt to hide his snicker when he saw Pepper, squeezed in between a balding man with a forehead big enough to land a plane on and a woman with a face that looked strikingly like a bulldog, whom he could only assume were the assistants to some high-up CEOs – he didn't care to find out, because one look around the room confirmed that he was the most important man present.

"Thank you for finally turning up, Mr Stark," said a man directly to Tony's left, who wore a sardonic smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

Tony tore his gaze from the fishtank that stood in the corner and graced the man with his attention for about three seconds before turning back to it, "Mmm. Are those minnows?"

The man cleared his throat with a disapproving frown as he turned his gaze on Pepper, who was looking increasingly disgruntled. "I trust you have the paperwork, Miss Potts?"

The redhead passed over said paperwork, giving Tony a what-on-earth-are-you-plotting-now sort of look when she caught the mischief sparkling in his eyes. He made her wary in the most inexplicable of ways, but when they were in public it became a big deal – she did not want to be embarrassed in front of such important businessmen, and she had a nasty sense of foreboding swirling in her stomach. _This can't end well._

"Shall we begin?" somebody said.

There was a pause in which every head in the room turned to Tony, who was concentrating intensely on folding a paper airplane, seemingly unaware (or rather, he just didn't care) that he had his tongue between his teeth. He glanced up slowly, took note of the situation and said, "Sure, go right ahead. You have my undivided attention." Pepper groaned as she caught two men roll their eyes and one slap his forehead entirely. The man honestly had no shame, and Pepper couldn't help but feel that his overwhelming amount of confidence didn't do him any favours.

"Right, then. Mr Nicholas, would you like to start us off?"

The redhead felt the familiar sensation of having her head stuffed with cotton as an old man stood and started to speak in a voice that sounded like fingernails dragging on a blackboard, both making her cringe and losing her attention instantly. Instincts kicking in, her hand automatically began to take notes, allowing her to disengage from the meeting and watch over her man-child of a boss who was currently scribbling something down on the inside of his newly-constructed paper plane. Not really focusing, she watched as he placed his pen down and sent the plane flying over to her with a sharp flick of the wrist; she stared at it, confused, and then felt her head clear and her cheeks flush as concentration came hurtling back.

She was all-too-aware of both the smug curve of Tony's lips and the fact that no less than twenty-seven pairs of eyes were watching her as she unfolded the admittedly admirable paper plane to find the secret message inside. Tony's burst of complacent laughter reached her ears before the message made sense:

_Miss Bulldog sat next to you really makes me appreciate how beautiful my personal assistant is. May you personally assist me this evening?_

Trying valiantly to remain the cool and calm personal assistant she prided herself in being, Pepper crumpled the paper plane and tossed it over her shoulder, where it landed perfectly in the bin. Tony cheered and Pepper snorted, recovered quickly and disguised it as a very poorly-executed cough.

The man speaking, Mr Nicholas, glared at the two of them before continuing. He managed to successfully get out two minutes of his speech when it was interrupted by the unmistakable 8-bit theme tune that Pepper had to rack her brain to remember –

"Is somebody playing Tetris?"

"Yup," Tony said as he glanced up from what had to have been his phone screen, "want a go? I'm not very good at it, Miss Potts usually helps me beat the level-"

"Put your phone away, Tony," Pepper interjected in exasperation, trying to ignore how funny the situation would have been from any other point of view.

"You're the boss," he said, pocketing his phone and tapping his pen on the desk. "Well, technically, I'm the boss, but it's just a figure of-"

Mr Nicholas, his patience rapidly waning, cleared his throat once more and picked up where he had left off only to quickly discover how hard it was to keep a steady pace when there was incessant tapping coming from the man – child, pest, _job-ruiner _– beside him. He got back into it when the tapping stopped and he managed to bore everybody in the room for five minutes more with his speech on the economics behind his business when the inevitable happened.

"Hey man, can I borrow your pen for, like, two seconds?"

Mr Nicholas' face soured as if he'd bitten into a particularly bitter lemon and he turned his bloodhound eyes on Mr Stark, who was leaning over with an imploring glint in his eyes. Hand beckoning, Tony smirked and nodded in appreciation as the older man passed his pen over.

"Awesome, thanks."

Everybody watched as Tony added the newly-scrounged pen to his collection and began to build a tower, stacking all of the stationary he'd borrowed into a construction so tall that it reached his nose. He laughed, exuberant, and banged on the table so that the tower collapsed. As pens scattered and rolled onto the carpet, Pepper saw her reputation collapsing, too. She was on her feet in a flash and her voice was calm as she said, "Would you excuse us for just one moment? I need a word with my boss. Outside, Mr Stark."

He didn't argue, but he did give Mr Nicholas a shit-eating grin as he passed by to get to the door. Following closely behind Pepper, Tony began to whistle tunelessly, falling into a merry jig as they made their way down the corridor and out of earshot. Pepper turned, her expression incredulous, and demanded, "What is the _matter _with you this morning?"

Tony considered this, his eyes crinkling around the edges as he fought back a smile and his hands moving restlessly from his pockets to his waist and then back to his pockets. When he was unable to come up with an answer he simply shrugged, snickering in amusement at the look on her face.

"Honestly, Tony, you're acting like a five year old; I don't _get _it, care to explain?"

Confident as always, his jaw jutted out and he leaned forward and stole a kiss from her, his personal assistant, his closest friend and first true sweetheart. His unshaven jaw grazed against hers and she took a moment to compose herself as she breathed in the cologne that was her own personal brand of poison.

Then he pulled away and the moment was gone.

"I'm bored. I do spontaneous stuff when I'm bored." He flashed his pearly whites at her and then turned and skipped away, making an idiot of himself and scaring the waistcoat off of a businessmen as he passed.

Pepper's fingers tentatively touched the skin on her jaw, her stomach fluttering and her synapses sparking themselves into an over-load. A couple of things fell into place in her jigsaw-puzzle of a mind and she regained her voice soon enough to yell, somewhat half-heartedly, "No, I will not assist you tonight, you pompous asshole!" at her boss's back as he turned the corner and disappeared, leaving nothing but a string of eccentric laughter behind him.


	4. Hopeless Romantic Tony

**Excuses are bad. I hate excuses. Doesn't everybody hate excuses? But I do, in fact, have an excuse for the lateness of this chapter.**

**...I got into Sherlock.**

_**cowers**_

**Yeah, no, that's it. I watched an episode of BBC Sherlock and have done nothing but Sherlocksherlocksherlock ever since. So, of course, when I return to this stupid Ten Sides of Tony malarky, I feel like I'm writing about utter strangers - what is this Pepperony you speak of? I'm being serious when I say it took every fibre of my attention span to remember that Tony is a playboy, not a sociopath, that he's a superhero, not a consulting detective. That his name is Tony Stark, not Sherlock Holmes. **_**sigh**_

**So, yeah, apologies! Hopefully a good dosage of Iron Man 3 leaks and previews will keep me going, but if not, these updates might become even more rare.**

**Anyway.**

**DISCLAIMER: You know the drill.**

**Hopeless Romantic Tony**

Pepper, feeling rather self-piteous, stretched her hand over to the coffee table, fingers grasping desperately at air for a full ten seconds before she faced the fact that the tissue box was simply out of reach. With a sigh, she unstuck her bare arms from the leather of her sofa, grabbed a handful of tissues and proceeded to blow her nose so loudly that she shook the dust from the lightshade. Well, not quite, but in her feverish state of mind that was how she imagined it. With a groan she fell back against her pillows, feeling rather as though she was about to puke up her kidneys; what she needed was rest, but the PA found her muddle of a mind plagued, poisoned, _possessed _by her man-child of a boss.

"You're ill, Pepper," she told herself sternly, acknowledging distantly how the first sign of craziness was talking to oneself but choosing to ignore it. "You needed the day off. Tony will be fine, he'll be _perfectly _fine, he's a grown man and he can manage." When she refused to accept her own words of advice she heaved a sigh and said, "It's not like he will set himself on fire or blow up the mansion or, or-"

As soon as the words left her mouth her trusty BlackBerry lit up with a buzz, and the redhead was riddled with such a sudden, intense fear that her heart stopped beating - what if he _had _set himself on fire? Her shaky hands snatched up the device and opened the message which, true enough, was from Tony, but it was devoid of anything worrying. Actually, it was pretty sweet.

_You okay? I know that you told me that you were ill but I'm just making sure._

Pepper tapped back a quick, "I'm fine, just get your paper work done like we planned and I'll see you tomorrow," put her phone back on the coffee table and then let her eyes slide shut, listening to the cars rolling past outside and only half noticing how the rumble of the engines sounded too loud, too close. Too tired to care, the PA tucked her legs up and promptly fell asleep.

When she woke, her forehead was damp and her hair was tied back, and she was in her bed. A quick glance at the bedside table showed a wet towel that had been wrung out and left there. Somebody had opened the window, allowing for a cool breeze to part the curtains slightly and reveal the orange glow of the streetlamp outside - it was evening, it seemed.

Pepper sat up and noted the fact that her limbs weren't stiff anymore, her head was clear and, in fact, the only thing that felt wrong was the way her stomach was threatening to eat itself; she was _ravenous_. Scratching idly through her hair, Pepper muttered something about a shower and then pizza as she padded through her apartment to the bathroom, failing to notice the creak of the front door shutting and the squeal of expensive tyres on tarmac.

Freshly showered, with smoother skin and fluffier hair, the redhead changed into some pyjamas and retreated to the living room, stopping only to pick up her BlackBerry from her bed. It took her a moment to realise that she had a new message - her body had recovered from the illness (rather rapidly, for some reason, though she _had _been asleep all afternoon), but her mind hadn't quite caught up yet. Pepper smiled despite herself when she saw it was another text from Tony.

_Hungry?_

She flicked on the television with one hand and typed, "It's my day off mister, I'm not making you dinner," with the other. The drone of the sitcom filled her ears as she began the process of scrolling through the list of take-away service numbers stored on her phone - a list that had become her bible since working for Tony, who refused to eat unless it was pizza or Chinese food.

Clamping her teeth down on her bottom lip and hopelessly succumbing to her "eyes-bigger-than-stomach" syndrome, she jotted down several pizza-place numbers on a memo pad and listened to the rumble of her stomach, unable to decide which pizza to choose. Seeing as she was already deviating from her usual healthy eating habits, she decided on something laden with sloppy cheesy and covered in meat, her utterly emaciated brain demanding that she hurry and order the damn thing before she passed out.

She was just tapping in the number of a satisfyingly local Domino's, fingers slipping over the keys in anticipation, when there was a knock at the door (a very loud triple-rap that Pepper didn't recognise at all) followed by a call of "pizza delivery!"

With a jolt of surprise she jumped from the couch and lost her balance, teetering into the lamp and knocking it into the wall with a very audible crash. She heard the man outside shout something and so she scurried to the door to see two fingers poking through the letter-box, holding the flap open.

"Everything okay, ma'am?" the man asked through a very thick, very false-sounding Texan accent.

"I didn't order any pizza; not yet, anyway," she said, peeking over her shoulder to inspect the damage done in the living room and wincing - smashed bulb, broken curtain-pole and, worst of all, a smudge on her dignity. She looked back at the letterbox to see a very chocolatey coloured eye pressed up against it, twinkling with what she identified to be mischief or mirth, or perhaps a mixture of the two. The letterbox snapped shut as the fingers were withdrawn and Pepper's eyes narrowed in a new-found suspicion. "Hang on a second..."

There was a rattle followed by a click of the lock, and Pepper stumbled backwards a few steps as the front door swung open to reveal Tony on the doorstep, dressed in a clean shirt and jeans and laden up to the eyeballs with pizza boxes. He gave her a cheeky wink before staggering over the threshold uninvited and, it seemed, uncaring. The pizza boxes were dumped straight on the floor as Tony turned his attention on his assistant and slipped what had to have been a spare key into the pocket of her dressing gown.

"Just 'cause you didn't order pizza-" he planted a swift kiss on her cheek, for once failing to graze her jaw because he had actually shaved, "-doesn't mean-" another on her forehead, "-I can't bring you some." He swooped down for the lips and then halted and closed the gap between them with a DVD case so that Pepper, to her extreme irritation, found herself kissing cold plastic.

"You're a tease," she sighed, flicking him playfully on the forehead and noticing, for the first time, his headwear. "What's with the cap?"

Tony grinned as he pressed the DVD into her hands and got a hold of the pizzas again, drawling as he carried them into the living room, "I paid a homeless guy all of the money in my wallet for it. Gives me more of a pizza-guy look, doesn't it?"

"How much exactly was in your wallet?" she asked exasperatedly.

"Couple o' hundred, maybe. Probably more." He shrugged and patted the space next to him on the couch, and Pepper had a couple of seconds to marvel at the sheer amount of money and lack of care her boss had before she joined him, hopping over the fallen lamp and collapsing into his warmth. "Just doing my good deeds as a superhero. Where would the world be without Tony Stark?"

The quiet babble of the television filled the stretch of comfortable silence between the two before Pepper spoke again.

"I could really get used to this, you know," she hummed, entwining her fingers with his and stroking rhythmic circles into his hand with her thumb.

Tony looked down at her amusedly, his expression softening for a wavering moment to reveal something much more tender than lust or greed. Something along the lines of love, the little voice in his head decided. Maybe. Probably. He blinked a couple of times to chase the thought away and said, "Get used to what?" as he fed her some of his pizza.

"This. You. Us. What even is this, Tony?"

They both glanced down at their hands; his larger hand, scarred from years of working with machinery, cupped her delicate one in a reflexive protective manner. He had subconsciously positioned himself around her so that his back shielded her from what he couldn't see, so that she was constantly in his care. Stored on his phone were countless texts from her that had made him smile or laugh, or alternatively had maybe scratched the man's ego, dented his dignity. A past-time Tony enjoyed was browsing through them from time to time, revelling at how far their relationship had come, how much she had changed him as a person, how much he had grown to love her. He scoffed at the thought; love. Tony Stark had never been in love before.

To change the subject, he took a bite of her pizza and asked, mouth full of food, "Do you feel any better, anyway?"

"Lots , actually." She crinkled her nose in disgust we he leaned in to kiss her with his mouth full and skilfully blocked his lips with her fingers, shaking her head in an I-don't-think-so-you-utter-slob manner. Then a thought struck her across the head that, bizarrely, hadn't even fazed her before in her ill state-

"I came round earlier, y'know, you were pretty much unconscious at that point though." It was as if he'd read her mind. He tore off another piece of pizza and munched on it as he continued. "I put you in bed and uh, just a warning, if you throw up later don't be alarmed, it just a side effect of-"

"Of what?" Pepper cut across him, her eyes wide.

"-of the drug that Jarvis suggested I administer to you. It was damn expensive, but he said it would help you to get better quicker-"

Raising his voice towards the end of his sentence in a fight to be heard over Pepper's oncoming attack of complaints, Tony pulled away and put his hands on her shoulders, speaking directly to her so as to explain that he was _obviously _only try to help, that it was _obviously _only a small needle and that the scar on her arm would _obviously _fade in the next couple of years but, for some reason, he was getting nowhere.

"_You injected me with a foreign drug while I slept_?" she demanded, outraged, as she tore off her dressing gown to inspect the tiny scab on her upper arm that definitely hadn't been there before.

Tony felt a flourish of warmth in his abdomen at the sight of her bare skin that was most unneeded, so he pointedly looked away and asked, rather politely, that she either gave up her fixation on not hooking up with her boss or put on her dressing gown again. With a face stormier than a thundercloud, Pepper threw her gown back on and grabbed more pizza, chewing furiously and glaring holes through the coffee table.

Tony took off his newly-acquired hat and placed it on Pepper's head, where it rested snugly. When she didn't so much as blink he complained, "I knew it would be safe, I had Jarvis run uncountable checks on it. I just wanted you to be better so that I could spend Valentine's night with you."

That caught her out- _Valentine's Day? It was the fourteenth already?_ The PA jumped to her feet and scuttled over to the fallen lamp, bending over to pick up the calendar that had been knocked off of the wall. Huh. So it was.

"So... So all this is for-"

"For Valentine's, yes." Tony raised an eyebrow and tapped absently on the arc reactor. "I thought you knew that?"

She shook her head bemusedly, finding it more and more difficult to hear anything over the heavy throbbing of her quickened pulse. So, he hadn't come over just because he was bored, or lonely, or because Rhodey wasn't available. He'd come over for _her _and only her. It was almost his weird way of expressing his feelings - through odd, homeless people's clothes and lots of pizza. Pepper watched as Tony picked up the DVD that lay discarded on the table; _Fifty First Dates_, one of her favourite movies. He popped it open and revealed not only the disc inside, but a card, too. In a dream-like trance, Pepper held out her hand and took it.

It was an average Valentine's card on the outside, adorned with hearts and roses and a cheesy poem in shiny red font. On the inside, though, it was Tony. Tony all over. Not just the playboy Tony that seduced anything with legs, but the real Tony that Pepper had grown to love over the years. The Tony that had come with the arrival of his arc reactor. Taking a shaky breath, she read:

_Virginia,_

_I like you see there I said it Jarvis is helping me write this and he only knows as much about women as I've programmed him to know so he's not really much help I think I should probably just tell him to go away or something but anyway yeah so I think you're awesome and gorgeous and intelligent and I'd love it if you'd let me take you out to dinner or to the cinemas or to Europe whatever you want just name it okay good_

_I love you,  
Tony_

With an odd mixture of giddiness and exasperation, Pepper looked down at the man sat before her, feeling her heart give an odd squeeze when she took in his red-faced state. He was nervous. She swallowed once, twice, found her voice, blinked a couple of times and then swallowed again.

"Do you know that none of this is punctuated?"

"That's _all _you have to say on the matter-"

"And that you just expressed your love for me in a Valentine's card-"

"-I was in a rush, okay, and I didn't know what to say-"

"-you called me _Virginia_-"

"I like the name Virginia."

She hesitated for a split-second, but long enough for Tony to realise that he'd finally said the right thing. He stood up leaned towards her, one hand on the small of her back holding her in place. Their noses almost touching, Pepper succumbed and closed her eyes, feeling his warm breath tickle her lips, his arc reactor cold and very real up against the exposed skin of her collar bone. As she took charge and kissed him, tangled her fingers in his hair and caressed his cheek, Tony snuck a hand into her pocket and retrieved her phone.

"Who are you calling?" Though her lips were rather distracted with his, her voice still managed to sound impatient and exasperated, not a rare occurrence when dealing with Tony.

"Your mother," he said, finding Mrs Potts' number in the contact list and hitting the green button.

Pepper pulled away and looked at him in disbelief, speaking slowly and deliberately, "Why are you calling my mother?"

When he heard the dial tone, the billionaire pressed the phone to his ear and smiled knowingly. It rang three times and then-

"Hi, Mrs Potts, it's Tony here. Yeah, Stark, your daughter's boss. Haven't we met? I'm sure she's told you all about me." He looked over and met her eye with a wink before continuing. "Anyhow, I'm just calling to ask if I may have your permission to sleep at Pepper's house tonight. I'll stay on the couch, of course, unless further invitations are received-"

The phone was out of his hand and, then, out of the room, before the nerves in his body even began to form a complaint. Taking her distraction as an open opportunity, Tony seized his personal assistant by the hips and proceeded to express every unspoken word through kisses, making certain that his every intent was clear enough, simple enough, exaggerated enough. After a rather heated couple of minutes, he kissed the tip of her nose and said, "Virginia Pepper Potts, will you be my Valentine?"

"Yes."

"Was that basic enough?"

"Of course."

"Wasn't weird, was it?"

"Definitely not."

"...Will your mom hate me now?"

"Most probably."

"I love you."

"I quit."

"Okay, not really what I was hoping for, but I guess-"

"I wouldn't complain, because now it's legal for me to do this-"

She kissed him.


End file.
